Five teens, 1 murder, 1 skeleton… that is now missing. Things will get dangerous!

One of my Kodansha-Free-Manga-Haul, I wasn’t planning on writing a review, but here were are. While I didn’t enjoy it always, there were some good moments. This is one of the darker ones on my list, I mostly went with cute, romance, or comedy. But I just couldn’t resist this one when I saw it, it gave me all the horror movie vibes. You know the ones I am talking about. We accidentally/not-so-accidentally killed someone, now be silent, oh no someone found out. Those movies. You know where everything goes from normal-ish to fuckity fuck.

In this book we meet 5 friends, 4 of them super popular, one not so much. Each of them seemingly seem normal and sweet, but we find out that when they are eleven they murdered a man. For quite a bit of the book you are wondering who and why, I mean, normal kids don’t just keep a dead body and do a ritual so no one talks. But then later we find out and I was just crying. Sad that these kids had to pick that route to save a friend of theirs.

I did like that we get to know most of the characters quite well. From bubbly and cute Haruka who will go far to protect the secret to is he a kind guy or just a bad guy Akira to cute but silent Tsubaki who carries a big weight with her.

I guess a part of me would be like why didn’t they just call the cops when they killed the guy. I mean given the circumstances…  I get that they were eleven and panicked, but if you panic so much that you decide that burial is the next best thing… that is not OK. I mean, things wouldn’t have been easy if they had confessed, but maybe less stress-inducing than now. And then later with the skeleton disappearing along with their pact, I would have liked one of them to just step up and say heck to it. Instead they just go along with it, having to do something that had my stomach turning and which I mostly just tried to get through. I guess they are really dedicated to hiding this secret of theirs. I wonder how far they will be going to protect themselves and that secret. I wonder how far that mysterious guy who found the skeleton will make them go.

The last part just pissed me off. So a warning for assault along with gore and gruesome scenes. Girl, get away from that guy, holy crap. Go to that other guy, you other friend, the one you are clearly interested in but due to what happened when you were 11 went a bit sour. He still likes you. You like him. He is much better than mr Dickison who you are dating right now.

Oh, and I have to give points to the cover, that one is haunting.

All in all, I am a bit on the fence about this one. On the one hand it is a good read with murder and mystery, but on the other hand I just couldn’t help but shake my head at so many bad decisions and how many secrets lurked in this friendgroup.